If You Go Down To The Woods Today
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Liz Lester certainly doesn’t remember encountering murderous primordial lizards on her Duke of Edinburgh practice expedition.


**A/N:** Title is a quote from a British children's book, Duke of Edinburgh is a kind of extra-curricular course involving survival skills and the like, CCF is the Combined Cadet Force, and Piriton is anti-histamine for allergic reactions. _**Please read and review!**_

**Disclaimer: **I own Liz and her friends, but nothing else. Primeval is ITV's, Lyle is fredbassett's.

* * *

"Um."

Jonathan Lyle did not like that guilty tone of voice from Connor. It meant that something had gone drastically wrong, and Connor felt it was his fault and didn't want to mention it but also felt that he had to mention it, which probably meant it was a seriously large problem. "What is it, Connor?"

The ex-student was ashen-faced. "There's one missing."

Lyle swore. "What! Fuck. How the _fuck_ could we have missed one?"

"I don't know!" Connor was evidently taking this as a personal failure: he sounded miserable. "Deinonychus are pack animals, so you wouldn't expect one to leave the herd, but- I don't know! And you know the worst bit?"

"How can it get any worse?" Jenny demanded, with a face like thunder. "There's a primary school not half a mile away!"

"Yeah, but there's a Duke of Edinburgh expedition lot out even closer. They asked me for directions!"

Lyle swore again. "How old were they?"

"I don't know! They said they were doing bronze or something."

"Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award- at least fourteen," Lyle muttered, and then added more loudly, "but this deinonychus- the question is- where the hell do we start looking?"

* * *

Juliet Sayers growled something incomprehensible, peered at the map, and growled something slightly more audible and definitely rude.

Liz Lester craned her neck to look over the other girl's shoulder. "What's the matter?"

"We're _here_ and we should be _here_." Juliet stabbed her finger at the appropriate spots on the map. "I _said_ that guy's directions were dodgy."

"Hnnf." Liz turned, and called, "Amandeep, is Mark all right?"

The thus-addressed Amandeep looked up from where she was examining the cuts on the backs of Mark's legs. "Yes, it's just scratches from brambles, and if he would- oh stop whining," she said impatiently to Mark. "I didn't do anything."

"You poked it and it _stings_," Mark complained.

"Ed doesn't complain so much about his hayfever," Amandeep retorted. Liz sympathised with Amandeep; Mark did whinge a bit, and on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition a tendency to whinge was not in any way a helpful character trait.

"That's because Ed can just take Piriton and it'll go away."

Liz rolled her eyes and folded her arms. "Quit bickering. We're not going to get anywhere like this." She took the map from Juliet, who gave it up willingly, and examined it. "Here, if we go _this_ way and find this village, we can go _this_ way and use the public footpath and... hey, that might even be quicker than the route we should've taken. Cool. If we get a move on," she added sharply. "Come on, Mark."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Mark grumbled, and added- "Does anyone else feel like we're being watched?"

Amandeep snorted scornfully and Ed rolled his eyes. Liz and Juliet shared a glance, and Juliet cast her eyes heavenwards.

Mark shivered, and caught up with the others rather quickly.

* * *

"What... one deinonychus missing? Let me just make certain of this- you were rounding up a pack of highly dangerous predatory hunters within half a mile of a primary school, and you allowed one to go missing? ... Yes, Professor Cutter, I _do_ realise that you were chasing half a dozen other evil little sods as you so picturesquely put it. Never mind. Where did you say you are? Dorset? Are you _sure_?... _Where_ in Dorset? I'm sorry, what did you say?... oh, Isle of Purbeck?... No, no reason. Lovely scenery, I'm led to believe. Find that missing deinonychus. Goodbye, Professor Cutter!"

The phone was put down with a decisive click. "Mrs. Chapman, kindly inform my driver that we will be leaving for Dorset in ten minutes."

"Yes, Sir James."

The secretary left the room, her low heels tapping sharply on the floor.

"Surely not." This time, he spoke more softly, as if to himself. "Not even Liz could possibly..."

He picked up his BlackBerry, selected his daughter's name from the contacts book, and pressed call. It rang.

Liz did not pick up the phone.

* * *

"If he says 'how much further?' again I shall-" Amandeep hissed as they reached a bridge that led to the village and stopped for a breather two hours later. Juliet made an agreeing noise, winkling a pebble out of her walking boot; Mark kept falling behind, being by far the most unfit and least equipped for the Great British Outdoors of the five, and he kept asking when they could stop or how much further they had to go, which they found seriously annoying.

Mark screamed, and all four whirled in the direction of the sound. He was running towards them at a speed they'd never have believed he could accomplished only five minutes ago, eyes wild with fear, and he was being chased. None of them had ever seen anything like it before- some kind of lizard, almost as tall as Juliet, the shortest of them, with grabbing hand-like claws and a sharp curved talon on its feet, small sharp serrated teeth, a long balancing tail, tiny eyes- it was injured, a fresh slash of some kind across its right flank, but that didn't seem to be slowing it down much. For a moment, they stood utterly still, and then Liz glanced over the parapet of the stone bridge and registered the deep, fast-running river, and said the first thing that came to mind. "Packs off and into the river now!" she yelled, dropping her own rucksack and scrabbling for a weapon of some kind as Amandeep, Juliet and Ed hurried to obey, and that was the first splash as Ed jumped in, and a second and a third- Liz's hand found a stick of some kind, a piece of branch some rambler had used as a walking-stick for a while and then abandoned, and she straightened as Mark pounded towards her, the creature hard on his heels.

"Take your pack off!" she screeched, but Mark didn't seem to hear her, ran straight towards her, almost crashed into her, falling heavily and screaming as the thing leapt on him, tearing with the talons on its back feet. Liz gave a scream of her own and brought the heavy stick down with all her strength on the thing's neck, hitting again and again until it disengaged from the sobbing Mark and turned on her, hissing, and she hit it straight across the head this time so hard the stick broke and it staggered away, momentarily stunned. Liz seized Mark, who had begun to try to get to his feet, crying and whimpering, and tipped them both backwards over the parapet, straight into the river.

The impact with the freezing river water made her gasp for breath and inhale water, and Mark was flailing and struggling and preventing her getting to the surface. Finally, she broke the surface, spluttering and choking, and grabbed hold of Mark's t-shirt, realising that he probably couldn't swim injured like this and she should have thought of a better plan and- oh, that was right, where were Amandeep and Ed and Juliet?

A hand reached out and grabbed Liz and she shrieked and flailed at it. "It's okay!" Ed shouted. "I'm not the bloody deinonychus!"

"You're not the bloody what?" Liz sputtered. Her schoolfriends were clinging to one of the bridge's supports, and she joined them as Amandeep and Juliet took Mark's weight.

"Deinonychus. S'what that thing was."

"And how the _fuck_ do you know that?" Liz demanded, feeling slightly frazzled.

"Weren't you keen on dinosaurs as a kid?" Ed said defensively. "It looks just like the artist's impressions and everything."

"Well I'm ever so glad to hear that," Liz snapped. "What do we do now?"

There was a silence, and everyone watched her, Amandeep and Juliet supporting Mark. "Fuck," Liz said crossly after a moment. "Why do you all think I know what to- never mind." She glanced up, the bridge reassuringly solid above her. "Let's be _logical _about this, okay? We're not staying here. We don't know that that thing can't swim and we can't spend forever treading water- 'sides, Mark needs to go to hospital. Um. Not going back on land in case that thing's still there... oh my God!"

"What?"

"We still have the map!" She was right. The map, laminated and foolproof against the worst excesses of teenaged Duke of Edinburgh explorers, was still on its string round her neck. She clung onto the bridge with one hand and her feet, and fumbled at the map, squinting at it in the poor light. It was an Ordnance Survey map, easy to read and comprehensive, and she stared at it until she found the bridge on the map and then peered at the river, looking for weirs. She didn't find any. She let go of the map, allowing it to bob on its string, and said decisively: "We're going to have to float down the river and find somewhere to climb up or someone out canoeing or something."

"We'll have to take it in turns to help Mark," Juliet pointed out.

Liz nodded. "That too. C'mon, let's not hang around." She could still see that thing- a deino, deino-something –in her mind's eye, gaping hungrily. How badly had she hurt it?

They let go of the bridge, and went with the current. The river was cold and their boots heavy, but tied on too securely to kick off mid-paddle, and they were constantly looking around for the lizard-creature, wondering if it would appear and leap at them from the bank. Mark, too, was helpless- they couldn't examine the cuts while they were in the water, and they didn't have a first-aid kit in any case, but they were plainly nasty and he was still whimpering.

Eventually, Amandeep spotted something up ahead, and let out a yell. Liz nearly went underwater out of sheer shock. "What?"

"A jetty. A jetty!"

The small private jetty was not far ahead, a rowing-boat tied securely to a mooring-post on it, and a fence running along the bank either side, with a firmly locked gate controlling access to the garden beyond the jetty. Ed reached it first, and hauled himself up onto it, helping the others pull themselves up after him. Juliet, Liz, and Amandeep heaved Mark onto the jetty together, before they got out, because he didn't seem to have much strength. Liz was worried that he'd lost a lot of blood, and God only knew what had been in that river water, the cuts could easily get infected. Now that they were out of the water, they could see how nasty they were; two long ones, deep but getting shallower towards the end on the backs of his shins, luckily missing the major veins, and less serious, thinner ones on his shoulders. He was pale as paper with shock and the cold of the water, and he had other bumps and bruises from falling when the creature jumped at him.

Liz got up and looked at the gate. She could climb over it quite easily if necessary, although there were spikes on the top; it only came up to about her waist. There was a garden beyond it, with a long, recently-mown lawn stretching up to a house some way away, with a patio and a garden table and double doors presumably from the living room opening onto the patio. There were a couple of gnarled apple trees, and two long flowerbeds running up the sides of the lawn, beside thick hedges. A small girl was standing on the lawn, staring at them; she was wearing a pink dress, and holding an inflatable ball. Liz called to her. "Hello!"

She came a little closer. "It's okay!" Liz called. "We're just kids. Can you fetch your mum or your dad, one of our friends is hurt."

The girl stared for another moment more, and then ran into the house, shouting for her mother. Liz turned back to the others. "It's okay, someone's coming. I hope."

She heard the girl coming back with her mother, babbling about the strange people on the jetty, and went back to the gate; the girl's mother was carrying the keys for it, and she came and unlocked it quickly, letting herself onto the jetty. "What's happened?" she said, and gasped as she saw Mark. "Oh my God."

"We were on Duke of Edinburgh and we were attacked by this _thing_," Amandeep said, her voice shriller than normal. "Like a really big lizard. Liz made us all jump in the river to get away from it, but Mark got hurt."

"We need to call an ambulance," Liz added quickly. "And the police. We left our rucksacks behind and there'll have been blood around, and it was on a road so someone's probably been there already and if the teachers find out they'll freak out."

"Okay. Okay," the woman agreed, running a hand distractedly through her fair hair and staring at Mark. "What're your names?"

"I'm Liz Lester, that's Amandeep Singh, Juliet Sayers, Ed Mackenzie, Mark Chandler," Liz answered, pointing the others out. "Can we borrow your phone?"

"Yes. Of course. I'm Jean. Come up to the house," the woman said. She seemed highly distracted, probably because her daughter was hanging onto her leg, thumb stuffed into her mouth and brown eyes round.

"Stay with Mark," Liz said to the others, then followed the woman quickly up the lawn and into the kitchen- Liz scrubbed her boots guiltily on the doormat; they were muddy and the floor was clean –where Jean handed her a cordless phone.

Nine. Nine. Nine. Liz tapped in the numbers with fingers that were suddenly trembling and pressed call, then held the phone to her ear.

"Hello, Emergency Services," someone said, cheerful and enquiring. "How can I help you?"

"Um, we need ambulance and police, I guess," Liz said doubtfully, suddenly not feeling very confident. "I'm Liz, I'm with my friends, we were out on a Duke of Edinburgh trip and one of us got attacked by a- by a creature and we jumped into the river to get away. He's quite bad, I'm worried the gashes might've got infected. Also, I think people'll be out looking for us, because it's been- oh God, it must have been an hour, maybe more, and we dumped our rucksacks, so there's blood and rucksacks and some kind of horrible animal lurking by a bridge and someone'll have found them. I'm Liz Lester, my friends are Amandeep Singh, Juliet Sayers, Ed Mackenzie and the hurt guy's Mark Chandler."

"Okay. Thank you Liz. Where are you?" the operator said, still soothing.

"We're... Where are we?" Liz asked Jean.

"West Holme, on the B3070," Jean replied, flipping through an A-Z to show Liz exactly where. "Twelve Elm Lane."

"Twelve Elm Lane, West Holme on the B3070. Isle of Purbeck... in... yeah, right, Dorset," Liz relayed. "Please, hurry," she added, sounding more frightened than she had before, "and please tell someone about that thing because it's vicious and it's fast and it's big- nearly as tall as Amandeep- oh, sorry, um... maybe five feet tall? And it's got these huge claws on its back feet. I thumped it with a stick but I think I only stunned it."

"Okay. Thank you, Liz, you've been very helpful. An ambulance is on its way and Dorset Police Force have been informed. Are you with Mark?"

"No, I'm in a house and there's a jetty at the bottom of the garden and that's where Mark is, with the others. He couldn't swim for himself and walking's definitely not going to work," Liz said, looking out of the kitchen window. Juliet came up the lawn to the kitchen door. Ambulance? she mouthed. Liz gave her a thumbs-up and kept talking. "Injuries?... He has two big gashes on the backs of his legs. They missed big arteries, I think, the blood wasn't spurting. Also he has cuts on his shoulders but those aren't so bad. I'm going to go and check on him now but I don't think the cordless phone will work down there."

"It will," Jean said, filling the kettle. "I'm making tea, do you and your friends want some?"

Liz suspected that this was what her father called a 'coping mechanism', and said yes please, could she have one sugar please and she'd go and check on the others. "Okay, I'm going to go see Mark. Where's that ambulance?" she said down the phone.

"Close. Within five minutes of you," the operator reassured her.

"Good," Liz said fervently, and ran the rest of the way down the lawn and let herself onto the jetty. The others had spread out, allowing Mark more space, and Ed had torn up his thin, soaked jacket and was using the pieces to put pressure on the two big injuries. "An ambulance is on the way and Jean's making tea," Liz announced. "It's going to be okay. Mark, are you ok- stupid question, sorry."

"Can you get him to talk to me?" the operator prompted her.

"Mark," Liz said obediently, "I've got an emergency service person here, can you talk to them?"

"Yeah," Mark managed. "Gimme the phone." Liz knelt and held it to his ear, and Amandeep took over from her so she could stand and go back to the house. Juliet, meanwhile, was taking orders for tea.

"I'll go back to the house," Liz said, feeling rather like a fifth wheel. It was as if she'd got them this far, and she wasn't needed any more except as the tea-girl.

Juliet smiled at her. Liz didn't know Juliet as well as she did Amandeep and Ed; she was really Ed's friend more than Liz's, although what Liz had seen of her so far was impressive. She didn't complain, or if she did, she made it self-deprecating and funny. She was smarter than Liz, but she didn't make a big deal of it. "I'll come with you. Two milk-and-two-sugars, one just-milk, and Mark can't have any in case he needs an anaesthetic. Two milk-and-two-sugars, one just-milk... oh God, I'll forget before we're even up the lawn!"

Liz smiled.

"You were amazing back there," Juliet said conversationally after a moment, and Liz blushed. "How did you know what to do?"

The other girl shrugged helplessly. "I just... there wasn't anything else to do. Not really."

"You could have run away."

"It would have caught m- that's the ambulance!"

They stopped and looked at each other; they could both hear the unmistakable wail of an ambulance siren, and hear it stop as it reached the house. "I'll tell the others," Liz said, and ran back down the lawn, yelling that the ambulance was here.

The paramedics came down through the house to the jetty with a stretcher and took over; now, not only Liz but the others felt like spare wheels, with the apparent exception of Amandeep, who joined Mark in the ambulance at Mark's insistence. They collected in Jean's kitchen, sipping cups of tea and saying very little, except for the occasional remark like "so, are we going to have to redo our expedition?" which never started a conversation.

Liz was sitting cross-legged on her chair –Juliet had no idea why, but she seemed happier like that- and staring down into her tea, which she'd only had a few gulps of it and which was getting steadily colder and nastier. She was white-faced, paler than normal even for her, and her dark hair was drying in rat's-tails, tangled and messy in the confines of a tight ponytail. Liz put down her mug on the table and rested her elbows on her knees with a sigh, and then there was a crunch of tyres on gravel outside signalling the arrival of a car. She got up, curious, and went out into the hall to the open door to see who it was, and saw a large official-looking black car draw up into the driveway behind several functional jeeps full of people with murderous-looking weaponry. Sir James Lester got out, straightened his tie, and looked round.

"_Dad_!" Liz shrieked, and flung herself across the gravel at her father.

Connor stared. Abby stared. Nick stared.

In fact, everyone stared, because Sir James Lester –sarcastic, cool and sometimes downright mean- was letting his daughter cling to him like the last lifeboat off the Titanic, and was, in fact, clinging back. Eventually, he held her out at arms' length and summoned a severe expression. "You, young lady, are grounded for the rest of time."

"What!" Liz yelped. "Dad!"

"I send you off on a nice simple camping trip," Lester continued, yanking her into a tight hug, "and what do you do? You get yourself into mortal peril. This is not acceptable behaviour! I presume it was you who battered the animal with a stick?"

Liz grinned and nodded.

"Gave it hell?"

"Purgatory, maybe," Liz conceded. "You can let go now, Dad, I like my ribs where they are."

Lester smiled, and put his arm around her shoulders. "Some daughters are embarrassed by their fathers."

"Some fathers are embarrassed by their daughters," Liz retorted. "I'll tell all your work friends about you meeting my CO at CCF."

Lester pulled a face of eloquent disgust. "It was the assumption that I enjoyed... _hiking_... that I objected to."

Liz snorted. "I thought it was the blatant come-on. Never mind, Dad, what are you doing here? I thought you did something boring at the Home Office. This does not look like something boring at the Home Office. And how did you get here, anyw-"

"Hey, Liz, is this your dad?" came the interested tones of Juliet Sayers. "How did he get here?"

"Good question!"

Juliet smiled and shook hands with Lester. "Hi, Liz's dad. I'm Juliet. How did you get here so quickly? How did you know Liz was here?"

Lester put his hands in his pockets. "Nice to meet you, Juliet. I was coming down to pick Liz up anyway, because we're visiting her brothers this evening. The teachers let me know about the entire fiasco, so I made a detour."

"I really hope you didn't tell Mum we went missing," Liz said, trying to wipe a puzzled expression from her face. "She'll flip her lid."

"I haven't," Lester reassured her. "Ah, the contents of your rucksacks have been rescued. I believe one of these is yours, Juliet." He produced five different mobile phones and held one out to Liz, offering the others to Juliet, who picked out her own silver flip-top phone and thanked him with a smile. "Also, the teachers inform me that this expedition can be considered cancelled, given your friend's unfortunate accident. A lift back to London will be available- you might want to call your parents and tell them that."

"Okay. Thanks, Mr. Lester," Juliet said and wandered away to call her parents.

"What happened, Liz?" Lester asked once she'd gone.

"Why are you lying?" Liz shot back, as quietly as she could. "We're not visiting Nicky and Jamie today, it's tomorrow."

"I mistook the date."

"Like hell you mistook the date. Don't lie to me, Dad, I don't like it."

"Let's not argue now. Just tell me what happened."

Liz narrowed her eyes at him. There was a long, silent moment that wasn't so much a battle of wills, as two wills deciding whether the odds were good enough for a battle, and then Liz gave in. "Well, we were walking and Mark fell behind. He had scratches from brambles, I suppose that's what attracted it. Then he screamed and we turned and we saw he was being chased by a... by the thing, and I made the others leave their backpacks and jump in the river. Mark fell over and I hit it with a stick until it left him alone and tried to go for me so I hit it across the head with the stick really hard and the stick broke. I dragged Mark into the river and we sort of floated down till we came to the jetty at the bottom of the garden here and... and that was pretty much it." She trailed off, and stuffed her hands in her pockets, staring at the toes of her walking boots.

"That explains why you're soaked, then," Lester observed. "Aren't you cold?"

"Not really."

One of the soldiers (one of their medics, presumably) snorted at this, and stuffed both a mug of something hot and a foil blanket into Liz's arms. Liz gaped. "What do I need these for? I'm not cold, and as for this-" she took a sip, and pulled a face remarkably similar to the one Lester had pulled earlier- "ew, this is _manky_."

"Drink it," Lester said. "It's good for you."

"Oh yeah? Like tomatoes will make me taller?" Liz demanded, nose wrinkled with disgust.

"Humour your old father," Lester said waspishly, "and drink it. I was worried about you and I feel entitled to fuss over you now." He took the blanket, shook it out and wrapped it around Liz's shoulders.

"Yeah, well, I was worried about me too," Liz said grumpily. "What with being nearly eaten, I've had quite a stressful morning. Oh. And the other thing."

"Mm?" Lester said, watching Jenny neatly corral and interview the girl who'd introduced herself as Juliet.

"Dad, Ed identified the thing that nearly killed Mark as a deino... deino... oh, whatever, it sounded like Dino Knicker-less, anyway. A dinosaur. I wasn't paying much attention at the time what with the narrow escape from certain death, but Dad, dinosaurs in _Dorset_?"

_Oh dear_, Lester thought. "There's an experimental government research facility near here. I'm not privy to the details, but-"

"Respectfully, Dad, bollocks to that."

"Mind your language, young lady!" Lester exclaimed.

"Won't. It was definitely a dinosaur. Swearing is justified. Honestly, Dad, you expect me to believe that HM Government is managing a rerun of Jurassic Park in south-east England?" Liz sipped her unidentified nutritional hot drink, and absently watched Abby and Connor have an argument involving a certain amount of emphatic arm-flailing on Abby's part and a lot of apologetic body language from Connor. "I would be more convinced," she persisted, face screwing up involuntarily at the taste of the drink, "if you said there was a mysterious portal letting dinosaurs loose on the public and nobody remembered to rearrange the Duke of Edinburgh routes and put a proper perimeter fence around the area to stop them getting out."

_Ah,_ Lester thought to himself. _We have a problem_. He saw Nick Cutter turn away, his shoulders shaking with laughter, and scowled. Bloody Nick Cutter. This wasn't funny. "Liz?"

"Yes, Dad?"

"I think we need to have a talk."


End file.
